Hero, Herald, and Axe-Lady
by happinessfsh
Summary: When a nasty bunch of rogue Templars discover her young son's got magic, Lilith rushes him away from their home in the Hinterlands. When he discovers Lilith in the woods, swinging an axe and vomiting poison, Blackwall decides it's his duty to help her. And when the Inquisition comes knocking, they both find themselves in more trouble than they could possibly imagine.
1. Chapter 1

(-)

Until he found the woman in the woods, Blackwall had settled in for a sleepless night.

The Hinterlands were quiet as the grave when they weren't being flooded by bandits, demons, and every other sort of filth that roamed the earth. Deep enough into their interior and the silence got eerie at night. The forest made some noise-the wind in the branches, the nearby waterfall—but it wasn't much.

Silence wasn't conducive to sleep for Blackwall. Too much room for thought. He rarely slept through the night, but given how unpredictable the safety of the Hinterlands had been lately, this was more blessing than curse.

He woke from a light sleep sometime close to dawn, when it was still dim and shadowy. Cold, too. Strong cold that pierced every garment. It was no worse outdoors than in, so he rose, dressed, hung the sword at his side, lit the lantern, and left for the woods. There were traps there to check. Game had been scarce, and trapping seemed excessive when he didn't plan to stay long, but still, anything was better than trading in the Hinterlands. Resources were so scarce that the hunters could do nothing but demand an arm and a leg for whatever they had to offer.

He kept an eye out, as he went, and both ears open—he knew the sounds of the woods and the waterfall so well that he could distinguish anything extra. He heard nothing but the squelching from his own boots until the sounds of a fight broke out.

He was, very briefly, startled.

First came a crash through the trees, and with it shouts, and more, smaller crashes. A woman yelled, a pained and panicked sound that ended in a swing and a grunt.

Blackwall drew his sword and moved in the direction of the fight. The lantern lit only a small distance ahead of him, and the light shook furiously as he went.

"Use your magic," shouted a man's voice, out of breath, between blows, "Why? Why don't you use your fuckin' magic?"

There was a smash of something hitting wooden shield.

"Got no magic," said a woman's breathless voice. "I told you I've got no magic."

There was a massive crash, and the woman yelped with pain. And again. This time, more panicked, and fainter; there was a thrashing sound, the sound of something dragging, crackling, over the forest floor, and then, out of nowhere, a high-pitched, drawn-out scream from the man.

As the sound drew Blackwall toward a clearing, and as the lantern lit up parts of two figures, there was the ugly _chunk_ of a blade hitting flesh. Then, silence.

Blackwall stood still, and there in the path of the lantern was a woman holding an axe.

The woman was alone, shaking, and so dazed that she didn't, at first, look into the light. She was tall, black-haired, and, in the yellow light, seemed bloodlessly pale. She turned to look at him; she had one black eye and a cut across her lip.

"Thought I saw light coming toward me," she said. Her voice was low, sick, and raspy. "I mean no harm."

"If you mean no harm, then lower your blade," said Blackwall, wondering how much of what she said was true.

She tilted her head back, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

"Lower yours. Then we'll talk," she said. She then twitched and began shaking more fiercely, clinging to and hunching around her axe as though she were an old lady and the axe her cane.

"All right," said Blackwall, and sheathed his sword. She lowered the axe, moving closer, but continued to watch him narrow-eyed. "Talk, then. Tell me your business here. Why is there a body behind you?"

The woman leaned forward and squinted at him, as though having trouble focusing.

"Beg pardon?" she asked.

"There's a body behind you," repeated Blackwall, louder, pointing. "What's that doing there?"

"Oh," said the woman. She wiped her brow on the back of her hand, and shrugged. Up close, he saw that her face shone with sweat. "Templar. Rogue Templar. A very stupid rogue Templar, who wasn't able to understand that, uh," she took in a deep breath, "I don't have magic, being that I'm using an axe."

"I see," said Blackwall. The body, from what he could make out, had been chopped at like a piece of meat. Blackish blood coated the grass around it.

The woman nodded gravely. Then she stumbled, grasped at the trunk of a nearby tree, and slid to the ground, staring dully at Blackwall all the while.

She made a face.

"Oh," she said.

"Oh, what?" he asked, unsure what had gotten her looking at him so fixedly.

"You're a, uh," she waved her hand around, looking for the words. Then out of nowhere she pitched forward and vomited on the ground between her legs.

"…Grey Warden," she concluded, tilting her head upright and wiping her mouth. "Got the symbol."

"Don't like the wardens much, do you?" he asked, wondering if she was drunk.

"Wardens are all right. I don't feel well," she said.

"Yes," he said. "I'd…worked that much out."

"Think I've been poisoned," she said. Her eyes were already half-shut, whites visible.

She crooked her finger at him.

"Come here," she said.

He took a cautious step closer. She opened her eyes with some effort, and looked up at him, glazed and unseeing.

"If you got hold of my son," she slurred. "I'm going to make you wish you were dead."

Her eyes closed again. She gently crumpled to the ground, twitching.

(-)

**Hi, readers who've made it this far :) Disclaimer, I don't own any bit of the DA universe. **

**However, I definitely get the impression that Thedas must be quite the shitty place to live and the world events of all the DA games quite the shitty times to live through. So I've thrown two OCs into the Inquisition timeline to navigate all the shittiness. Also, there will be Blackwall/OC romance because why not, could get interesting.**

**All right. That's about it. Read! Review! Favorite! Do whatever the hell you want! Preferably keep reading though.**


	2. Chapter 2

Shortly after the gash in the sky stopped spreading and word reached the Hinterlands that Andraste had graced Thedas with a Herald, Lilith found three corpses across the creek from her house.

Matthias, her son, had been wandering ahead of her and was the one who first spotted them. He backed away and retreated down the path without a word, hands shaking threateningly, burning scent of electricity entering the air. When she approached the bodies, Lilith saw why he was so frightened. Matthias had seen corpses before, but these three seemed by their dress to be Templars.

They'd been brutalized, beaten to a pulp by magic. Armor battered, hair burnt, skin melted.

Lilith, coughing on the rich, days-old stink, took a step back. She was having trouble looking away. One of dead was a grey-haired woman who she could have sworn she'd seen in town before. There had of late been an influx of Templars and mages in the Hinterlands. All came to fight. Why the Hinterlands was the chosen battleground, Lilith couldn't understand.

The sound of crackling and a worsening of the burning smell pulled her out of her fixation.

"Matthias," she said, sloshing her way through the creek toward him. He was standing in the doorway of the house, opening and closing his shaking hands. Blue light trailed, smoking, from between his fingers.

Lilith steered him inside. She closed the door.

"Will you look at me?" she asked, taking care to speak loudly enough for him to hear. She ran a hand through his hair, anxious for her touch to register.

He looked up. His eyes were huge, and glazed with panic. "I don't think I can stop it," he said. He spoke fast, tripping over his words the way he did when his magic began to show up. "It happens when I'm afraid. I can't do anything about it."

"We'll see," she said, reaching toward him. "Hold on to my hands. Tight."

He hesitated, gazing at the smoke that wound past his knuckles.

"It'll hurt," he said.

"It won't," she said, shaking her head. "I've got tough hands. They're more scar and callous than skin at this point." She held her palms up for him to see.

"I don't know. I think I'll hurt you. I don't want to hurt you," said Matthias. His voice cracked, and he took a step back.

"You won't," she said, although she was never sure. "I'll tell you what, though—" she went to the kitchen table, picked up the gloves she used to handle some of her more abrasive potion ingredients, and put them on. "I'm prepared. Come at me."

He paused a moment, eyes flitting from his hands to hers. He then timidly reached out and grasped.

She felt heat from his hands warm the gloves. She held still, and smiled at him.

"I'm too strong for you," she said.

He didn't smile back, but his hands, thank the Maker, began to cool.

She let go. He stood awkwardly, watching her for a reaction.

"You've got burn salve, still, don't you?" he said. He glanced at her hands. He was guilty, and overeager to right things.

"I don't need it," she said, removing the gloves and waving them. "These are good. They're armor, more or less. Without them I'd have no hands."

"That's bad. You need those," said Matthias.

"Precisely," said Lilith. "But I told you I'm too strong for you. You're going to really have to try if you want to hurt me."

"All right," he said. His voice was still small and shaken, but he was trying pretty well at lighthearted. "I mean…" he made a face, realizing what he'd agreed to. "I'm not going to try?"

Lilith laughed at that, more out of dissolving tension than anything. "Thank you," she said. "Now," she glanced out the window to where the bodies lay, obscured by trees. "You should lay down."

(-)

He slept for about an hour. Matthias' magic, when it showed itself, always left him drained. That was one of a few things Lilith knew about it.

Matthias was ten years old, and had odd timing. Lilith had given birth right at the tail end of the last blight, when word still hadn't reached her home in Ansburg as to whether the Archdemon had been defeated. Then, just as the circles of magi were disbanding left and right, he'd begun waking Lilith up in the middle of the night with odd behavior. His dreams either got him glassy-eyed and screaming hysterically or sitting up calmly in bed, conversing with nothing. He became ravenously hungry and full of constant, jittery energy—even moreso than the average nine-year-old.

Then one day he went to open the front door and accidentally burnt a hole in it.

She'd suspected with the onset of strange dreams that he was coming into his magic, and had been sick with dread when he'd confirmed it. Lilith had no magic, and her parents had had no magic. Matthias' father had been a Templar on the track to becoming commander, so he was straight out of the question. Lilith, growing up, had been as afraid as anyone else of blood magic and crazed apostates. She was afraid now, but for different reasons.

In the past few weeks, she'd been preparing herself for far worse than the sight of a few corpses. First, there'd been the opening of the Breach; it had happened in the afternoon, out of nowhere, with a crack and a boom, sounding like the loudest thunderclap she'd ever heard and briefly plunging everything into blackness before switching to hazy, greenish light. The air had smelled wrong. She'd locked the door and sat for hours with an axe on her lap and her arm around Matthias, wondering what sort of demons the end of the world was likely to conjure up and what exactly she'd do when they broke the door down.

When the light came back to the sky, the breach stopped spreading, and the world didn't end right away, she wasn't sure she could relax. It was better that she didn't, because then the fighting began.

She'd seen bodies on trips into town, try though she did to look at them only out of the corner of her eye. Lilith's home was located far enough away from civilization that the worst of the chaos didn't come to her, and while she was no warrior, she could wield an axe well enough to intimidate the squirrelly groups of bandits who occasionally came skulking through.

"I want you to stay in the house for the next few days," Lilith told Matthias when he woke. She sat on the windowsill by his bed, watching him closely. He seemed well enough; sleepy, not much else.

Matthias, sitting cross-legged on his bed, rubbed his eyes, then made a face at her.

"Really?" he asked.

She was never comfortable with how quickly he seemed to adjust to horrible things. It was only "seemed"—he tended to deal with them in violent nightmares—but by all appearances, his conscious self bounced back in a matter of hours. If Matthias was upset by what he'd seen, he hid it better than ten-year-old Lilith ever could have. Ten-year-old Lilith, she recalled dimly, could barely tolerate being told no, let alone being shown corpses.

"We don't know who's in the area. And with the way your magic comes and goes," said Lilith, "you don't really know if there'll be Templars catching sight of you with your hands…you know," she opened and closed her own, "smoking a bit. It's not so easy to hide, love."

"Well, I said I think it's just when I'm scared," said Matthias. "So if I'm not scared…" He spoke sadly, eyeballing Lilith and looking, she knew, for some hint of relenting in her expression. She steeled herself.

"You can't know nothing's going to scare you," said Lilith, standing, and returning to the kitchen table. A few gnarled little potatoes sat there, waiting to be peeled for supper. "And if you see Templars coming, they'll frighten you for sure. Not to mention…Oli said something about fade rifts opening up around—"

"I'm not that scared of the fade, actually. I really did talk to a spirit there," said Matthias.

Lilith raised an eyebrow at him.

"It looked like here," he said, repeating the story he'd told countless times. "The spirit that talked to me looked exactly like—uh, like Beefbone. He told me he wanted me to be comfortable so he made himself look like…my beloved animal."

"Oh, Maker, Beefbone," said Lilith, rolling her eyes at the name. "You know that Beefbone wasn't our dog, don't you?"

"No," said Matthias, looking at Lilith as though she were insane.

"Matthias," she said, laughing now. "He was the Vales', and he kept coming here because you fed him. Madame Vale pitched a fit thinking we were trying to steal him."

"Oh…" said Matthias, opening his mouth, then closing it when he couldn't think of a response.

"Fade rifts aren't nice, though," said Lilith. "No Beefbones coming out of them. Demons. That's all."

"All right," said Matthias, getting visibly nervous once Lilith mentioned demons. He'd met those, too, in the fade, she was sure of it, but he refused to speak about them. The first thing out of his mouth, whenever the fade got mentioned, was always the Beefbone story. He wasn't willing to describe anything less silly.

"It's all right, though," said Lilith. "The Herald of Andraste's going around closing them."

She immediately felt silly invoking his name.

The Herald of Andraste, supposedly, had been the one to stop the breach growing. What scant news reached the Hinterlands from Haven suggested that he'd proceeded to do absolutely nothing; the breach still loomed large, rifts popped up here, there, and everywhere, and everyone still fought like mad. Nobody in the Hinterlands even had a name to attach to the lofty title; it was a human male, and that was all anyone seemed to know.

"The Herald of Andraste," boomed Matthias. "I gave him a name. It's Harold."

"Wonderful," said Lilith, digging her kitchen knife around the eye on one of the potatoes. "Now. Let's go over what you'll be doing in the next few days, shall we?"

"Running around the woods yelling," said Matthias.

"What'll you actually be doing?" said Lilith.

"Running around the woods yelling," repeated Matthias, giggling, which was getting a bit annoying.

"Matthias. Stop," said Lilith, setting her knife down and trying for the sort of impassive look that usually got him quiet. "You'll be…?"

"Inside," said Matthias, glumly.

Lilith nodded. "Safe," she said.

He began to speak, but was cut off by a knock on the door.

They traded a glance. Lilith's heart raced, as happened every time anyone knocked on the door or rode past the house. Fighting and bodies aside, lately, even the more apparently harmless strangers had gotten bold about begging, borrowing, and stealing. They pretended too hard to be friendly just to gain access to food and supplies. In such spare times, a house, no matter how tiny and humble, suggested to the more desperate refugees someone with endlessly deep pockets.

Lilith went to the kitchen window and glanced outdoors. Olina Gertek—a dwarf around Lilith's age, and one of her closest neighbors—stood by the door, glancing around herself and looking as anxious as Lilith and Matthias felt. This gave Lilith pause; Oli was kind but tough as nails. She'd gotten Lilith out of a scrape early on with a group of bandits on the road into town. They'd been friends since.

"Got smart about answering the door, I see," said Oli, slipping indoors.

"Hello Lilith. Hello Matthias," said a low voice past the doorway. Lilith jumped.

"Karina, come in," called Oli.

"Hello Karina," said Lilith.

Karina, a young woman with blonde hair, was about a head taller than Lilith, and stooped to enter the house. She was a mage, tranquil for reasons Lilith had never learned. Oli had found her wandering the woods, half-starved, calmly sporting all manner of cuts, and pregnant with a baby she quickly miscarried. Oli had since taken it on herself to look after her until a safer place could be found.

"Lil, we've got trouble," said Oli.

"Have we really," said Lilith, forcing sarcasm. Her heart climbed into her throat.

"What's going on?" asked Matthias. His voice had gone soft and he hung back pensively.

"Rogue Templars," said Oli. "Four or five of them."

Lilith's stomach plummeted.

"Where?" she asked.

"Close," said Oli. "They were just outside Master Dennet's stable. They spoke to me, asking did I know the mages out this way. We cut through the woods to get here and they're taking the road, but…we've got to move. They're on our tail."

The room felt airless. Matthias drew closer to Lilith. Lilith, in her mind's eye, could see nothing but the bodies across the creek, in sharp focus. She remembered the grey-haired woman's body. She gulped, nauseated.

"They know he's got magic," Oli continued. "They know about Karina, too, for what that's worth."

"Start packing," Lilith told Matthias, brushing her hand over his cheek. She let it linger a moment. "You know what to get. Go," she said, pointing to the trunk at the foot of the bed. Matthias did as she said. Karina followed him.

"How," said Lilith. "How do they know about him? How far are they?" She went to the door; on the back of it hung her axe, old now, used usually for chopping wood, but recently sharpened and easy enough to attack with. She removed the axe and went over, in her mind, how best to swing it, remembered placement of her fingers, good positioning for her feet.

"Can't be sure, but you know Berrit's a hand at the horsemaster's stables now," said Oli, grimacing. "I'll bet even money the Templars showed up with coin, hunting apostates, and he gave them his story. You know how he likes to have his own version of things."

Lilith slammed the axe onto the kitchen table.

"Sounds right," she said. Her hairs stood on end. She wanted to run and to axe someone at the same time. Months back, she and Marc Berrit had done some business, plus had a skittish little affair of convenience. He'd incorrectly taken that to mean she'd marry him.

"Point is, rogue Templars spoiling for a fight have been told there's mages living right around here. They're not right, either." She shook her head at some mental image, brow wrinkling. "They look like they haven't washed any blood off of themselves in about a week, one of them's missing an arm and another kept talking about how they'd all been tortured by a couple of the apostates out there in Witchwood."

Lilith let go of Matthias and removed the axe from the door. She listened, half-expecting to hear hoofbeats and voices approaching that second.

"Which direction do we go in?" she asked, when no hoofbeats sounded.

"Karina and I are headed to Redcliffe," said Oli. "They're keeping the mages safe enough up there. We're going to try to cut over," she gestured to the east, "the hills that way toward the old Redcliffe road."

"And the bandits in the hills?" said Lilith.

Oli gave her a pitying look. "We're not exactly spoiled for choice," she said. "We know there are Templars out there. The bandits may or may not show up once we're in those hills."

"We're ready," said Matthias. Lilith, who'd been looking out the window, turned, and started when she saw Karina standing directly beside her. Karina stared down her nose at Lilith. Matthias, across the table from them, pushed Lilith's pack toward her.

"The bandits don't care about us," said Matthias. "We don't have anything expensive."

"You hear like a hound," said Lilith. She wanted to hold him but there was, she understood, no time.

"All right," Oli gestured to the door. The four of them peered out the window. The coast, at the moment, was clear, and they slipped outside.

The house was surrounded loosely by trees, away from the road but still within sight of it. The trees weren't so thick, either; all tall, rangy pines, undernourished as most of the people in the area. It was early spring-usually biting and windy-but that afternoon the weather seemed to be conspiring against them. No wind. Dead silence instead. The fallen needles formed a thick, dry layer on the ground, and Lilith cringed as their feet crackled over them.

"Oh, Andraste's tits this is annoying," muttered Oli.

Someone's feet caused a particularly loud crack. Lilith, Oli and Matthias snapped to attention, while Karina continued on her way.

"Us. Just us," Lilith whispered to Matthias.

"No," came Karina's soft voice. "Templars."

Everything stopped. Everyone's breath caught.

Down the road, someone shouted.

Hot terror melted down Lilith's spine. She reached out and grabbed both of Matthias' hands, clinging tightly to them. Taking a step backward, she saw a disorganized cluster of people come into view down the road. The red and white uniforms were there, covered in dark stains. The Templars were ragged, with no horses, no helmets, and little armor. One of them seemed to be missing an arm.

Lilith ran, Matthias at her side. Blood pulsed in her ears, and the whole world was swallowed up by the sound of heartbeat, breath, and footsteps. They strained forward, unable to go fast enough.

The sprint had Lilith panting, and Matthias stumbled. She took him by the arm with vague ideas of dragging or carrying, then saw two of the Templars on their tail, and two more waiting on the path behind them.

She let go of Matthias. Above the booming of her heartbeat, she heard her voice.

"Go," she screamed. "Run. Go."

He sobbed, painfully out of breath. Sparks from his hands flew into Lilith's peripheral vision.

Something that wasn't a part of her conscious mind made the decision for her. She turned to the Templars, taking a few steps backward as she looked at them, but no longer fleeing. She held her axe, taking on a fighting stance.

"Oli," her mouth shouted, while her mind stayed a blur. "Take him—"

"You fucking idiot," Oli yelled. "Don't do this. Lil."

Lilith had no time to reply. The first Templar got within swinging distance, and she swung. Her axe-blade clanged uselessly against his breastplate, to her terror and dismay. His blade whooshed toward her. She dodged, off-balance.

Stumbling, she swung again, higher this time, and the blade notched right into flesh. Fresh blood spilled and ran fast, adding brightly to the crusty brown on the man's uniform. The man did not scream, and as Lilith tore her axe-blade back out of him, a hand grabbed her by her hair, dragging her. She was pressed to a hot, armored body.

"Are you the apostates?" a woman's voice shouted in her ear, jerky and rough, forcing its way out. "The apostates—" her arm reached out, pointing at the fleeing Matthias, Karina and Oli.

Lilith saw the other two Templars catching up to them. One grabbed hold of Matthias, the other, with a swing, sent Oli to the ground. Karina patiently hoisted her back up.

There was a snap and a whooshing sound, and the Templar who'd grabbed Matthias caught fire, screaming.

All was unnaturally silent as Matthias ran. Fast beyond belief. He ran all the way to the foot of the hill and his tiny figure clambered over the rocks, Karina and Oli close behind.

Lilith rammed her elbow backward, and stamped her foot over her attacker's. Both actions startled him into dropping her. One second of freedom. She swung, hit, swung again, again, and again. Her head seized up and everything blurred, but she caught glimpses of bright blood, caught the coppery scent of the stuff, and was both terrified and spurred on.

A blade slashed at her shoulder. She felt only mild stinging, and turned on her second attacker. She swung at him, too—bolting backward, for a moment, from his blade, then throwing herself forward. She swung once; blade stuck into soft flesh. She swung again; blade cracked bone.

He fell. Lilith saw one of his fellows dragging himself away. She ran, head still gripped by panic, and didn't stop until she reached the other side of the hill. She lowered herself to the ground, unable to suck in breath fast enough. The taste of blood was in her mouth, and she was shaking and parched. She rifled through her pack for water, found the skin, and drank, trying to look in every direction at once for her companions.

They'd gotten far enough that she could no longer see them, and she rose, stuffing the water skin back into her pack. She started in the direction she'd seen Matthias take, praying he'd been able to stick to his path.

She was able to move faster than she'd have expected, exhausted as she already was. But footsteps followed her, and she turned, hoping desperately that the approaching Templar was badly injured. As it happened, the Templar—a man no older than twenty—seemed unharmed physically. Something alien seemed to inhabit his skin, though; magic and torture had wrecked his mind.

"You're not an apostate, are you?" he asked her, eyes focusing on something over her head. His voice had a muffled stickiness to it. He was missing almost all of his teeth.

"No," she said, backing away cautiously, axe up. "I'm not an apostate. Wouldn't have an axe if I was, would I?"

"Maybe," he said.

"Please," she said, trying to look him in the eye, but continuing to back away. "I have no magic at all. Let me go and there'll be no harm done to anyone."

The young Templar drew a dagger. Lilith gripped her axe tighter.

"This has poison," he said. "I got it off bandits on the West Road. If you're an apostate…"

"I'm not," said Lilith. She dug her nails into the handle of her axe. Her stomach was in knots. The cut she'd been given on her shoulder began to sting.

The Templar gave her a long look, then shook his head.

"I can't trust that," he said, and she knew then that there was no reasoning with him. She turned and ran. "That's how you got us out to Witchwood, lying," he called after her, chasing, sounding almost in tears, "and you're not doing it again."

He yelled these last words like, voice now rough and hysterical. Lilith began to stumble, going out of breath fast. When she was forced to turn and fight the Templar, his poisoned blade caught her and just as it did, she knocked him unconscious with the handle of her axe. She dropped immediately to the ground and rifled through her bag for some sort of poison antidote.

She found none.

Whether she'd sold her whole supply and slipped up in documenting it, or whether Matthias hadn't thought to pack the stuff, she didn't know, but her heart squeezed in on itself when the only potions she found were health potions and antiseptic.

Time moved at a bizarre pace from there on out. Lilith drained the contents of two bottles of health potion, then continued to run. She moved fluidly and tirelessly, fuelled by Maker knew what. Though she'd knocked the young Templar out, somehow it didn't last, and he found her again.

He came across her in the sparse, chilly woods near Lake Luthias, in the grey light just before dawn. She was in a daze, unwilling to accept that she hadn't lost him after all, and unwilling to accept that the poison, slow though it apparently was, had caught up with her. She knew that she sweating head to toe and stank oddly, that her stomach felt mealy and that her heartbeat was off, but she couldn't let herself accept it. Still, when he went to finish her off, she could absolutely accept that it was time to cut him down before he did the same to her.

She was somewhat aware of another man entering the scene. When she saw he was a Grey Warden, she felt sure she'd hallucinated him. She'd neither seen nor heard of any wardens in area for a long, long time.

(-)

Lilith dreamt of Matthias, and of running. Her fever had spiked, and she found herself in some state between full sleep and full wakefulness. She was dimly aware of lying on something like solid ground and at the same time, saw her own feet pounding endlessly and hypnotically down overgrown trails. Her body was spongey with sweat, her stomach sick and her throat slimy. Chills hit her so hard that she was jerked right out of her dream-state.

Her muzzy mind suggested to her that there were footsteps headed her way, but she couldn't rally herself enough to pay attention until she heard the man's voice.

"Sit up," the voice said. "You're going to drink something."

It was a deep voice, commanding and worn. Strong Freemarcher drawl to it.

Lilith opened her eyes. She found she was lying on her back, staring at the grey sky. She didn't want to move. In a display of truly baffling fever logic, her brain argued that if she lay still, she'd stop shivering.

"I don't need to drink anything, thanks," she murmured. Her stomach gave a threatening gurgle.

"I see," said the voice, reasonably.

She was satisfied for a moment, until two strong hands grabbed her by the arms and heaved her upright. She shouted, jerking away from the man's grasp.

He let her go. With one last shudder, the chills started to dissipate and Lilith, crossing her arms and trying to sit straight, had a moment to take in the man in front of her; middle-aged, dark hair and beard, face rather gaunt. At least, that could have been the case. Her field of vision was expanding, contracting, darkening and blurring so wildly that she could have been looking at anyone.

She was fairly sure she saw the man hold out a flask.

"Antidote. The poison in your system's very common stuff. Every bandit in the area's got his daggers coated in it," he said. "Take this. Drink."

She stared at his gloved hand, and groped around it. She didn't trust flasks of unidentified liquid, particularly offered up by anyone with this man's hollow-eyed appearance. Better, she reasoned, that the flask was in her hand than his. If nothing else, she could chuck it at his head should the situation go far enough south.

"Who are you?" asked Lilith.

"Warden Blackwall," said the man, placing the flask in her grasping hand. "Once again, drink. You've not got much time."

Lilith's heart jolted at the last statement.

"Warden," she said. "Grey warden? I think we've met." She hadn't hallucinated him after all, then. That was a little encouraging.

He made some sort of noise of agreement. Lilith felt around for the neck of the flask. She uncorked it, and sniffed. She recognized the scent of some of the ingredients, but others she was surprised to find she couldn't place. There was a bitterness to the stuff that was unfamiliar to her.

As much as grey warden sounded somewhat comforting, the comforting titles of supposed heroes currently didn't mean much. Templars, too, were supposed to be honorable sorts, but that honor had gotten so far away from them of late that their name had taken on a new, ominous meaning. Anyway, the Hinterlands were such a powder keg lately that anyone could claim to be anything if it would facilitate robbing, raping or killing. The fact remained that Lilith preferred not to drink strange liquids offered by strange men, titled or no.

"That flask isn't poisoned," said Blackwall, voice raised, "The blade that gave you the gash on your arm was. So unless you want your son to become an orphan, drink."

"How," Lilith said, "do you know about my son?" She looked him over. She could grab him by the hair or beard, as both were quite long, and head-butt him. It would, at least, hold him off long enough for her to run.

"You mentioned him earlier," said Blackwall. "Threatened me with a fate worse than death if I harmed him.'

"Well, that sounds—" Lilith cut herself off with a hiss of pain. A sharp shock went through her chest. She hunched, clutching, and her hands took up a fierce trembling out of nowhere. Her heart did a strange little leap, then began to slow. It beat with a very soft, squeezing pulse. Her body shuddered, and she felt her head flop against one shoulder. She wished it wouldn't do that.

"That's it," she heard him bark at her, and he put a hand on her wrist, meaning to force her hand. "You don't trust me, I'm not disposing of your corpse."

She heaved her head back upright. It swam, and lights flashed in her field of vision.

"Oh, stop," she muttered at him. She opened her mouth and haphazardly sloshed the flask's contents back.

The stuff was foul. It tasted like creamy, bloody whiskey with a fair few sour clots to it, and it hit her stomach like a fist. She began to gag it back up, sputtering, but swallowed repeatedly, forcing the potion down. She finished the flask, then set it down and sat for a few moments with a hand over her mouth and the other on her stomach.

"Listen," she murmured, when her stomach settled. "Assuming that wasn't also poison, I've got to get to Redcliffe."


	3. Chapter 3

The antidote that Blackwall had given her may have worked by scouring her internal organs, but it worked quickly. Within a few minutes Lilith's heartbeat returned to normal. Her hands and feet tingled painfully as her circulation picked up. Her mental fog cleared, her muscles ached, and the gash below her shoulder erupted into stinging while Blackwall spoke.

"How many attacked you and your boy?" he asked her. "Were there more Templars?"

Lilith swallowed a few times to avoid vomiting again from pain and nausea.

"Yes," said Lilith. "There were more Templars." She couldn't avoid spitting their name like a curse. "They're injured."

"So they've taken to attacking families with children," he said.

"Apparently," she said. He glared at the path ahead of them, mentally somewhere else. "I don't think these ones were in their right minds, and Matthias…my son…he's got magic."

"Which is reason enough for the sorry fucking bastards. Of course," he said. "But you're searching, and we don't have time. Do they have him now?"5

"No," said Lilith. "He got away from them. I think…he'd be taking the main road. He doesn't know how else to go and I…" she remembered her last glimpse of Oli, slumped against Karina. "I don't know if he's got help."

"He'll come to the Crossroads, then," he said. "There's a fair bit of fighting there. The refugees haven't been staying. But there's word the Inquisition's sending more troops that way as well."

Lilith tried to follow what he was saying, trying to see through the gaps in the trees and to envision the road ahead of them. It was hard to focus. The streaks of green light from the Breach filled her with dread, and her terror at envisioning Matthias navigating the Crossroads didn't ease her stomach any. Her insides crawled.

"How long a journey if I go around the Crossroads?" she asked, shifting at the discomfort.

"Depends on what you run into on your way there," said Blackwall. "It might add hours, might add days. I'll tell you this much—I wouldn't go through Hafter's Woods. If you manage to get around the rifts out there, the bandits—"

Lilith's stomach contracted, and she gagged loudly.

"Ugh. Maker, that's awful," she muttered. She breathed in deeply through her nose.

"It is," he said, with a short, sharp laugh. "I've taken it. Vile stuff."

"Not the worst thing," she said. "I think the poison was a bit more vile." Her wound throbbed. She turned to examine it. It was hard to get a clear idea of its size, since much of her shirtsleeve was stained. She saw only that it was raw and open and needed bandaging or there'd be trouble before she could get halfway to Redcliffe.

"That's your only injury?" Blackwall asked her.

"Somehow it is," she said, picking at and peeling back a bit of cloth from the bloody area. She hissed in pain, and felt around for her pack. It sat in the grass by her side. She rifled through it for potion containers and found two of the small ones Matthias had packed, plus a length of cloth bandage. The bottle, a health potion, she drank from, thanking the Maker her health potions went down smooth and tasted like nothing.

The second, a small bottle of musty green antiseptic, she opened. She grimaced at it. She hated this particular antiseptic with a passion; it made Matthias cry every time and damn near made her cry too.

"So, there are bandits in Hafter's Woods," she said, trapping her lower arm between her knees and turning to face Blackwall. He held her gaze for a moment, then quickly dropped it again.

"Hafter's Woods are lousy with bandits," he said. "But I imagine you've had dealings with them before."

"Why don't you tell me more about them," she said in a rush, tipping the antiseptic over her wound until the whole bottle's worth ran down her arm.

The pain was terrible. She saw stars, yelled, and felt her mouth being covered.

"We're not alone in the woods here," said Blackwall, gloved hand still over her mouth. She nodded, breathing heavily, and he quickly removed his hand. For a moment, he seemed uncomfortable, clearing his throat and giving her a businesslike nod.

"Can't be too careful," he said.

"Yes," said Lilith, still shaking. She held an end of bandage in her teeth and wound the other end around her arm.

"So," she said, when she'd finished. "The Crossroads are a mess, the woods are a mess." She pictured Matthias, again, surrounded, and again banished the mental image. If she lingered on that picture, she'd be too afraid to move, let alone fight her way to Redcliffe.

"You'll find trouble anywhere," said Blackwall. "But you'd do best taking the same route your boy was headed toward. He's…alone?"

"He's not alone," she said, picking up her axe from her side because she had to do something with her hands as she spoke. "There were two with us. Our neighbor. She's injured. And there's another mage. Tranquil." She dug her fingernail into the axe handle, picking a little groove into the wood.

They were both silent, which was at that moment unbearable. Lilith stood and gave her axe a practice swing. Her wound smarted at the sudden movement, but she swung again. Anything to outpace her panic. She'd found early on that she had to do something—anything—when she was afraid. Once she sat down, lay down, let herself stop and think, she was sunk every time.

"So I'd say the Crossroads it is, Warden Blackwall," she said, cramming all practicalities to the back of her mind. There were endless complications down the road, but it had to be enough that she had her axe and her limbs more-or-less intact.

"Right," said Blackwall, speaking slowly, lost in thought. "You know, if your boy's gone through the Crossroads…he's likely found some protection by now."

"What do you mean?" said Lilith. She turned to him. The morning sunlight was angled toward him and the expression on his face was hard to read.

"The apostate mages look after their own," he said. "If they see he's got magic, they'll aid him however they can."

Lilith had witnessed this firsthand. The apostates did tend to care fiercely for the children who'd been left hanging when the circles dissolved and the unrest began. For some, the concern was for safety only, and they'd fight tooth and nail to protect them.

Others saw only unmolded minds and untapped power, and there were whisperings they'd found terrible uses for the uneducated mage-children.

"I know they look after their own," she said. "But…"

But the idea of leaving Matthias to the possible mercy of a volatile scattering of apostate mages gave her no comfort. For a moment, she couldn't avoid letting herself feel the overwhelming anxiety that had been dogging her. She looked him in the eye. He saw it.

She got ahold of herself quickly, picking up her pack and strapping it to herself. But the fear fought harder now for her full attention.

"I've got to walk," she said, beginning in a random direction.

"I'll see you to Redcliffe, then," he said.

"What?" she stopped herself, surprised.

"It's not far. I'm headed that way anyway," he said. "Recruiting's good there." His voice took on an upbeat tone that didn't seem natural to him.

He stood by the edge of the forest, shield on his back already, armor glinting. His armor and his person seemed to have been battered, haphazardly patched up, and battered again. She caught sight of a long scar on one side of his face, half-hidden by beard.

She didn't know why he'd committed this much to helping her, but it was clear he'd lived through worse times than these. And clear that he was, for whatever reason, sincere.

Besides, he was a Warden, and a Warden's blade did real damage.

"All right," she said. He pointed her toward the road, and the two of them started on their way.

(-)

It was a peaceful enough morning that Lilith couldn't force herself to believe the unrest ahead was real. It was cold, still. The wind whistled in the trees and stung her ears, but the walking and climbing was enough to keep her warm. Besides, the sun was almost beautiful if you avoided looking in the direction of the Breach, and as they went the rocky hills became higher and higher, almost blocking the green rays out.

Almost. Nothing could really cover the Breach.

"Not a lot of darkspawn in the area, are there?" she asked Blackwall, to distract herself. He wasn't much of a talker.

"No…none to speak of," he said. He'd paused to check the path behind them for any sign of movement. The wind had been kicking up enough racket to cover the sound of footsteps.

"Have you heard anything of the darkspawn?" she asked. "Or, you know, felt it?"

"At the moment, we've got worse to worry about," said Blackwall, nodding in the direction of the Breach.

"I see," said Lilith.

He hadn't given her much of a response, but then, Wardens never tended to reveal much. Lilith had grown up near a Warden stronghold, in Ansburg, but the Wardens there usually took care to distance themselves. They rarely mingled with the general public. Lilith recalled herself and her friends hanging around a few of the young male Wardens, ham-fistedly flirting with them, and receiving a lot of one-word answers.

"Now we're on the road," said Blackwall. "I've got a question for you, too."

"Ask away," said Lilith.

They'd come upon a creek. The bridge across it was broken, and Lilith jumped onto the closest solid section. He followed.

"What's your name?" he asked.

Lilith turned to face him for a moment, startled she hadn't mentioned it.

"Lilith Herron," she said. "Pleased to meet you."

She gave a short bow. Proper introductions were a habit she'd never managed to lose.

"Yes," he said, and she could have sworn he smirked at her over-formal gesture. "Likewise."

She turned again and made the leap from the bridge to the bank.

"You're a Freemarcher," he said. "You sound it. Just."

"Just?" she said.

"You've got pretty manners," he said, "for an axe-lady from the woods."

She rolled her eyes, and managed a laugh. She was grateful for his company. Without it, she wasn't sure where her thoughts would have wandered to.

"Well, Warden Blackwall," she said. "I did grow up in the Free Marches, very rich, pretty…ah, empty-headed. I'm here now," she gestured at herself, "not in a particularly good state, looking none too pretty, still a little empty-headed. And that's about all."

"Understood. Won't ask again," he said.

She felt, once again, a flood of gratitude toward the Warden.

"And you?" she said. "We've a bit of a walk ahead of us. I'll work myself into a knuckle-biting frenzy without distraction. Tell me about yourself."

"Knuckle-biting?" he asked.

"I chewed on my knuckles as a child," said Lilith, lifting a hand to her mouth and pretending to gnaw it like a rat. "Anyway?"

"All right," said Blackwall. "I was born in the Free Marches," he began, affecting a dramatic, storyteller's voice.

"Good start," said Lilith.

"I'm passing through the Hinterlands, recruiting," he said.

"I see," said Lilith, nodding.

"That's about all," he finished.

"Threw that in my face pretty quickly, didn't you?" she said.

"Right. Neither of us has a life story," said Blackwall pointedly. "Funny, isn't it?"

"You're sure you're not from here?" said Lilith. "Hinterlands folk, you know, they don't ask or share anything. Tight-lipped." With that, though, she was brought back to earth from the nice distraction the conversation had brought. They weren't all tight-lipped, she remembered. Some, if you dangled money in front of them, would sell any information. And she was back to thinking about Matthias, flipping back and forth between terror and hope.

She looked again over the treetops, and received an unpleasant jolt when she saw that smoke and sparks were visible now. All at once, they'd come up on the Crossroads, and as they walked, sign after sign of fighting appeared. Bangs, clangs, and shouting entered her earshot. There was the scent of smoke on the wind, the unnatural smell of electricity, and then a sweet, organic burnt smell that Lilith recognized but wouldn't name to herself.

"When we get to the Crossroads," said Blackwall, "I go ahead of you, and you need to keep your head down. You're not a threat and we're to give them no reason to think so. If they force a fight at you…" he pointed toward her axe. "Go for the throat if you can. If you try pulling that blade from a wooden shield, you're going to chance re-opening the wound on your arm."

She took a deep breath, and another. "Avoid sticking the axe-blade in anything dense. Got it," she said. The noise was getting so loud that it was hard to hear herself speak.

She wondered, spotting a blue haze drifting into the air, whether Matthias would have been frightened enough to use his magic. She remembered how fast fear got his hands smoking. Her hands broke into a sweat, never mind the cold air. Her mouth went dry.

_Don't let him. Don't let him_, she prayed. The Maker didn't tend to get any of her messages, but she felt a little better asking.

They'd come to a fork in the road. Patchy pine trees, and flatter land than before, lay ahead of them. Lilith saw a scattering of buildings consumed by soft flames. It was a bizarre sight in the early afternoon sunlight; fire and electricity were out-of-place. She couldn't make herself believe it, completely, but the screams that hit her ears got her pulse racing.

Two more voices screaming. One agonizingly drawn-out and high-pitched. She tried to identify the sound of them; none were the voices of children. Not yet.

Her heart pounded in her ears as they approached the burning houses. She listened breathlessly to every scream and shout, waiting and terrified to hear a child's voice somewhere.

"Stick as close as you can to the trees," said Blackwall's voice at her shoulder, sounding quiet now against the racket.

She drew back with him, and they crept in the scant shadows of the trees. There wasn't much cover, and they passed the first burning house, close enough to feel its heat. Lilith began to sweat. She had a broader view of the area, now. Trees, houses, and small, moving objects—she couldn't think people—were sporadically on fire. There were snarls of people here and there, mage and Templar, and she saw none she recognized.

"We pass the Crossroads, we're right on the old Redcliffe Road," he said, pointing. "You see the wall in the distance?"

It was partly obscured by smoke, but Lilith could make it out. It wasn't much, but it steeled her as much as she could expect anything to do gearing up to walk into an inferno.

"And exactly how likely are they to let us in?" she asked, it occurring to her that anyone lucky enough to have that wall between themselves and the bloodshed wasn't likely to want guests.

He didn't answer. Faster than thinking, a burning bolt fried the air above his head. He ducked, and Lilith stumbled away with him. Three robed men ran past them. From behind another burning building, two Templars—one limping, the other swinging his blade rabidly—rushed the mages.

One of the mages, a man with long, grey hair, spotted them, and yelled.

"On both sides," he shouted to his partners, and they split, one attacking the injured Templars, the other two advancing on Lilith and Blackwall.

"Stop," yelled Lilith. She coughed on the smoke, then regained her voice. "We're not Templars. NOT TEMPLARS." The next bolt of electricity zipped past her ear, so close her hair stood on end and she twitched.

"Too late, doesn't matter," shouted Blackwall, rushing one of the mages, head lowered. Lilith heard a smashing noise and was herself too caught up in swinging her axe as fast as she could into the grey old mage's face.

The impact jolted her and sent a sharp pain through her arm, but she couldn't think on it. The man made a terrible noise too muffled for a yell. That sent a jolt through her too, and made some outside force clutch at her chest and detach her thoughts from her surroundings.

Everything began to feel fluid, quiet, and strange.

More electricity, this bolt ice-cold, zipped past her, and she ducked it, rushing in its source's direction.

The source was a woman, an elf, very skinny, with huge eyes and a glazed expression Lilith numbly recognized as the same she must have. The elf, in a fast motion like a twitch, raised her staff, and Lilith slashed at her. Lilith, swinging arms feeling nothing now, saw the blade make contact, at the elf's chest, at her throat. She saw the woman flail her staff-arm. Saw her stagger. Saw the eyes wake up, mouth open a few times into screams Lilith couldn't take in.

In a few moments, the elf was at a heap by Lilith's feet. But something grabbed her, dragged her.

She tried to hurl herself forward, hollering. A man's voice yelled, over and over, at her. She thrust her head backward and tried to stamp on the man's feet.

"Lilith," shouted the man. She stopped, distantly wondering, and remembered Blackwall.

Her shoulders sank. He turned her to face him, pointing both fingers to his eyes.

"Wake up," he shouted at her, and she just began to, painfully. She could feel her chest expanding and contracting rapidly, throat gasping scorching air. The feeling was too much.

"I can't," she said, and ran.

(-)

Lilith fought with dangerously little skill or thought, but she was ferocious. Bones cracked, blood spattered. She was hot-blooded, fast, strong and made much stronger by either rage or fear. At first, anyway. But she was also very much like most of the newer soldiers Blackwall recalled serving under him. She reacted the same way most of them had once forced too soon into too chaotic a battle. She panicked, she flung herself into it, and she was too overwhelmed to pay attention to much of anything.

He spotted her, once, hit by a shield and beginning to fall. But he was caught up himself in fending off one of the apostates, and when he saw her next, she was upright. Stumbling, though.

"Lilith," he yelled in her direction. She looked around herself, in a daze, then spotted him. He gestured with his sword in the direction of the trees. She moved gingerly toward them, and he caught up with her there.

They had, somehow not dead, come to a lull in the fighting. Redcliffe was ahead of them, and she began coming more to herself.

"It's close," she murmured at him when she spotted him, pointing in the direction of the wall. She staggered, reaching, toward one of the rangy evergreens, then sank down beside it.

"One moment," she said, setting her axe on her lap. She tilted her head toward the sky, catching her breath. He sat by her, removed his helmet and ran the back of his hand over his sweating brow. The wind picked up, thank the Maker, and he removed a health potion from his belt and drank. He was worn, too, from fighting.

He remembered Lilith's injury.

"Your arm," he said, looking it over. Blood stained the bandage, but not as extensively as it could have.

"It's not too bad," said Lilith. She opened her eyes again. "I need to…" she muttered, and removed her pack from her back, opening and going through it. She removed a bottle and tipped it to her mouth, draining it quickly.

"Warden Blackwall," came a nearby voice.

He looked up to see Giles, one of the local farmers, standing at his side, a grazing goat at his side. Blackwall wasn't sure how either Giles or the goat were standing there so completely calm and unharmed, but Giles was so odd that most rules didn't apply to him. It was impossible to tell his age—Blackwall had tried to guess a few times, looking at him, and had come up with vastly different guesses each time—and besides, he seemed to appear always in the worst places. Once, though, he'd approached Blackwall with a nephew of his. "Warden, I'd like you to conscript this idiot," he'd told him. Blackwall had done so—the young man had been willing enough—and Giles had thought highly of him ever since.

"Giles," he said, nodding at him.

"Young lady," said Giles, holding up a hand in greeting to Lilith. "You look half-dead."

"I am," agreed Lilith. "Hello."

"We're headed toward Redcliffe," said Blackwall. "She's been separated from her son. Thinks he's likely there."

"Ten-year-old boy," said Lilith. "Bit tall, skinny, dark hair, with a female dwarf and a blonde young lady, a tranquil mage—"

"Saw them," said Giles.

"What?" said Lilith, placed a hand over her mouth, removed it, and didn't seem to know what to do. "Where? Are they hurt? Where'd they go?"

She stood.

"Redcliffe way," he said. "They were on the road."

"Thank you," gasped Lilith, and, apparently forgetting the both of them, turned and ran.

"All right, Warden," said Giles, watching her. "By the way, I've met the Herald of Andraste."

"What?" Blackwall forgot, for a moment, about the retreating Lilith. He wasn't sure whether Giles was serious.

"Yes. Looking for some of those rifts out there. He had a green spot across his palm," said Giles. "Red-haired fellow. No older than twenty. Didn't seem very intimidating, if I'm honest. Made a lot of stupid jokes and I couldn't understand half of what he was saying. His lady friend, though," he whistled. "Terrifying. And beautiful. Maker's breath, man, I'm telling you-"

"All right, then, Giles," said Blackwall, before Giles could go on. His descriptions of women tended to take very bizarre turns out of nowhere, and besides, Lilith had covered quite some distance already.

(-)

Redcliffe village, behind its ancient wall, was a resilient old place. In Blackwall's memory, it was a community constantly on its last legs; darkspawn and undead came at it and came so close to consuming the place that it didn't seem likely to bounce back. It did, though, every time.

The only issue was that once it bounced back from each new evil, it returned to life with something off about it. Made sense; you came out of each fight to the death with a few deep scars. Redcliffe's scars formed differently with each new battle. This time, they became evident as soon as he and Lilith passed the front gate.

"Why does it smell like that?" he heard Lilith muttering to herself, as the guards allowed them entry. There was a smell, apart from the usual dead fish stink of the lake. It was burnt and bitter, but otherwise difficult to place.

"Mages," one of the guards called after her. "That's magic stinks that way. Filthy spellbind fuckers overrunning the place."

"I see," said Lilith. Her voice was about as polite as usual. Her glare wasn't.

"Do you smell it?" she asked, squinting in concentration. "Or has something back there—" she indicated the Crossroads, "—addled my brain and singed my nose hairs?" She placed a hand gingerly on her eye. "Something seems to have cracked my skull too."

Imagine that, he thought. He pictured her with an arrow through her guts, looking down at the thing in pleasant surprise.

"Which is why you watch what you're doing," he said.

She tilted her head back, raising an eyebrow at him. Lilith's face had a severity to it; it was rather long, with sharp features and dark, narrow eyes. It happened that the way she looked at him awoke a paranoia he usually tried to ignore. It'd been some time since he'd felt that anyone, looking at him, was mentally stripping away his beard and Warden attire. He'd gotten to feeling, if not content, then hidden enough to wander away the rest of his days while his past self grew more distant and less real.

He knew why he'd followed Lilith this far. Why he'd been unable to leave her side since she'd mentioned her child.

That was why when Lilith looked at him he felt himself transforming into thirty-three year old Rainier again. Once in a while he encountered someone who gave him that feeling; mothers with young children, especially.

"So, Warden Blackwall," she said, and mercifully looked away from him. "We've made it into Redcliffe. This is where you leave, isn't it? Grey Warden business?"

She did not, of course, see thirty-three year old Rainier when she saw him. There was no horror or disgust in her eyes or her voice. Only barely-hidden nervousness, but she'd been nervous from the start over her son.

"This is Grey Warden business," he said. "Fighting goes on and children get dragged into it for nothing. I see you and the boy safely reunited, my business is done."

(-)

Lilith hadn't counted on the number of mages they'd find in Redcliffe. She'd seen a fair few on its streets during previous errands there, but now most of the people they passed were dressed in robes and carrying a staff. Town guardsmen were few and far between, but they asked a few of them if they'd seen anyone fitting Matthias' description.

One man found the question hilarious.

"Oh, you're missing a…let me get this straight, now…" he held a hand out, feigning concentration, "a boy, about ten years old, and he's got magic. Yeah?"

"Black hair, this tall," said Lilith, holding a hand up to demonstrate.

"Yes, yes," said the man. "You're on the hunt for a mage in Redcliffe."

"Have you seen the boy or not?" spoke up Blackwall, hand on his sword's hilt.

"Don't know. Probably," said the man. "You know who's up in that castle?"

"My guess would have to be the Arl," said Lilith, getting tired of the conversation already.

"The Arl!" said the man, mockingly. He then went dead-serious, and very red-faced, veins popping up where Lilith hadn't previously seen veins. "Tevinters!" he barked, pointing at the castle. "Fucking mages let nasty Tevinter fuckers into our village! Getting all set to make us into slaves, just like they like! You think the Arl's done fuck-all to stop them? Eh?"

"Bill," said a nearby guard, a young woman. "Shut up. Voice down."

"No," said Bill, but he lowered his voice anyway. "Hope you're ready for life as a Tevinter slave, Charlotte. Got no magic in you, that's the life you're headed toward with those ugly sods in the Arl's seat."

"I know," said Charlotte, glancing at the castle, voice quieting. "So shut up. You—" she pointed at Lilith. "You think your son's here?"

"Have you seen him?" said Lilith.

"Not him, exactly," said Charlotte. "The little ones, though—with magic—they're being kept safe enough up at Redcliffe castle."

Lilith could have kissed her. "Thank you," she said, with a short bow.

"Watch yourself," said Charlotte.

"Yeah. No need to start carrying any little Tevinter magisters, is there," said Bill, who'd been busying himself giving Blackwall the fishy eye while Blackwall stared impassively back at him.

"Just watch yourself," said Charlotte, speaking loudly and ignoring Bill. "Alexius—fellow up in the Arl's seat—he's iffy if you're one of them without magic. Odd stuff going on up there, too. My advice is, take your boy and get out of town. Try to get to Haven if you can."

There was a sinking feeling in Lilith's gut. This was happening too soon, this business of having to get out of town. She'd given birth to Matthias right at the tail end of a blight, and since seen fighting of all kinds. But it hadn't been until the sky had opened that she'd started to get the feeling that no matter where she went, there were no safe places left.

"I see," said Lilith. "Until then. Alexius…is he likely to put up a fight?"

"Hard to say," said Charlotte. "But I wouldn't bring one to him. You act as refined as you can with those weapons on your backs. They like refined. All of them think we're a bunch of savages down south, so if you act different maybe you'll catch them off-guard. And ah—" she cast her gaze over to Blackwall. "If you can clean up a bit, I'd do it. You smell. Both of you, actually."

"Yes, make yourself more desirable," said Bill, pointing to Lilith. "They like a clean-smelling slave girl, don't they?"

"Again," said Charlotte. "Shut up."

"I'm telling you," Bill said. "That Tevinter mage the other day, you heard him. 'Would you mind directing me to your women, I haven't impregnated nearly enough of them today'. Said it right to my face."

"Which Tevinter, the pretty one with the mustache?" said Charlotte. "I don't think he was serious, Bill. Listen," she turned to Lilith, "you'd better go before he rants more."

"How'd Tevinters get in here?" Lilith asked Blackwall, as they turned up a sidestreet, hiking up the hill.

"Damned if I know," said Blackwall. "This is the first I've heard."

Lilith shook her head. "World's gone mad," she said.

The castle was surprisingly far from the village gates; they spent longer than Lilith had anticipated climbing rickety stairs and well-worn dirt paths around Redcliffe's many hills, and they came to three different dead ends on five occasions. Within a half-hour they found themselves outside the castle gate. Lilith had never been so close to it. The castle was huge, and forbidding. She shivered, gazing into its highest windows. Charlotte had mentioned that the children were being kept safe up there, but how safe, around Tevinter magisters, it wasn't clear.

Two village guards stood by the gate. They didn't appear to be Tevinter, which was somewhat comforting.

Then again, Lilith was unsure what Tevinters did look like. She'd never seen one, and so usually pictured them as most southerners did; with demon-eyes and yoked slaves at their feet.

"State your business," said the first guard, sounding bored. Ferelden accent. That was good.

"I'm looking for my son," said Lilith. "Refugee from the Hinterlands. Matthias Herron. One of the other guards mentioned some of the mage-children were being kept here. "

"There was a boy named Matthias," said the guard. "He showed up yesterday. Had a female dwarf with him and one of those tranquil mages."

"He's here?" said Lilith. "I can see him?"

"He's here, yes," said the guard, staring at something in the middle distance. "You can see him."

The voice behind him called out something. It had taken on a sharp tone.

"They'll bring him down here, they said," said the guard, voice growing nervous, speaking quickly and standing straighter, stiffly.

Lilith nodded, anxious herself at the man's tone and at the faceless voice. Footsteps sounded, moving away from them, and Lilith was left waiting. The guard wouldn't make eye contact with her, and silence fell.

(-)

**Disclaimer: Bioware owns Dragon Age. I don't.**

**Hi readers. SleepiPanda, CakeBacon, and Senomaros, thanks for reviewing :). **

**So, a preview you never asked for for the NEXT CHAPTER: Lilith deals with some Tevinter mages, we get Matthias' view on things, which are getting weird fast, Blackwall does his own mysterious thing, and we hear more on this Herald of Andraste everyone's talking about.**


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